The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب

Monday, October 16, 2017

"Q: Right. I remember I was at Oprah’s house when she threw that first big fundraiser for Obama in 2007. And me, Obama and Chris Rock were huddled in a corner. And Chris Rock told us his famous story about the fight between heavyweight champ Larry Holmes and the great-white-hope boxer Gerry Cooney. Holmes was whipping his behind. And then, after Holmes knocked him out, the judges’ scorecards revealed that two of them had Cooney ahead in the fight! Rock said that his daddy told him that you can’t beat white folk — as in outpoint them in a fight — so you have to knock them out! As much as Obama loves to quote Rock, that particular message never gets cited. I was right there. Heard it with my own ears. Instead, Obama would quote Chris Rock saying that black folk always want credit for things they should be doing anyway, like paying child support; but he never quotes Rock’s relentless assault on white supremacy. Ain’t no balance, and thus he misrepresents the truth. I think that’s what you’re getting at.

Personally, it does not bother me BUT: can you imagine the uproar if a Muslim ambassador in DC or in London were to visit a church dressed like this? Can you imagine the reaction of international media?

Turkish media are really fed up with the claim of the assassination attempt by Syrian director, Muhammad Bayazid. Even pro-Syrian opposition media and social media are now mocking the claim. But Bayazid came with a response: he said that it is in the interest of the Syrian regime to get rid of him given his films.

"The team, which is closely related to Mr. Assad, is still in the running to qualify for the 2018 World Cup." What does this mean? How are the football players close to Mr. Assad? Does he train the team and supervise their training? Or is he accusing the team members of dropping barrel bombs? This is the trend in US journalism: you can get away saying the most absurd and ridiculous thing about a country if the regime of that country is not an ally of the US.

So The Guardian (which now reads as bad and as reactionary and as uncritical as the New York Times on the Middle East) among another media peddled a story that a Syrian opposition director, Muhammad Bayazid, was stabbed in the chest and that he survived an assassination attempt and that he was by his account at the ICU unit in a hospital. The Guardian, among others, made it clear that it was the Syrian regime which tried to kill him. But the next day, director of the GCC-sponsored CAIR posted a picture of himself with the director the day after the stab in the chest and said that he survived an assassination attempt (he even added that the "the stab which does not kill you makes you stronger). But the Turkish police today spoke: it said that there is basically no evidence of the assassination and that the director never reported the assassination attempt to the police and that for that reason there is not even an investigation. Just like the case of Orouba Barakat (which the Western media first said that she and her daughter were killed (stabbed and strangled) by Syrian regime thugs only to be contradicted by the Turkish police which found the murderer who was a relative who killed them over money), you really can't believe Western media on Syria because they are Pavlovian in regurgitating whatever is posted by Syrian rebels on their social media accounts--fabrications and lies and all.

PS Huffington Post Arabic posted a story on the doubts about the story and implied some money motives.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

"How Israel Caught Russian Hackers Scouring the World for U.S. Secrets". And Times learned that from whom? Objective observers of the situation? And look at the Times how proud: "But the role of Israeli intelligence in uncovering that breach and the Russian hackers’ use of Kaspersky software in the broader search for American secrets have not previously been disclosed."

The recent speech by Hasan Narallah in which he clearly distinguished between his party's hostility to Zionism, and drawing a distinction between hostility to Zionism but not to Judaism generated discussions and debates. Safiyyah Saadeh, a Lebanese academic and daughter of Antun Saadeh, the founder of the SNNP, wrote this article in which he argues that Antun's writings were misinterpreted and that he did not intend to express hostility to Jews qua Jews.

Jamal Khashoggi announced that he received an offer to write regularly for the Washington Post. He spent a career working as a propagandist for various Saudi princes. Do you think that a man who devoted a career for serving the propaganda of Bashshar Al-Asad or Iranian regime or Putin would get an offer writing regularly for a US newspaper?

"After having overseen the firing squads that followed the Communist victory he helped secure in Cuba, and after a stint running the country’s central bank, Guevara suddenly vanished in 1965, sent by Fidel Castro to organize revolutions abroad." The paper even managed to blame him for the economic crisis in Venezuela today. Absent from the article are references to CIA-formed militias and death squads which were facing communist guerrillas around the world. Also, the Cuban revolution was the least bloody revolution, in relative terms. The regime rarely resorted to executions. I favorably compare that regime to any of US-supported/armed autoacracies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Zaire, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Morocco, etc.

Is it with a straight face that US newspapers are feigning outrage over allegations of Russian propaganda infiltration of social media? Are the assumptions there that US government would never resort to such methods? And which is more extensive? US or Russian propaganda around the world? US or Russian interferences in elections worldwide?

Notice that Western media don't even mention Syrian civilian casualties of US bombing in the week when scores were killed by US bombs. Only Syrian civilian casualties of Russian and Syrian regime bombings are mentioned.

"Lebanese actress Anne-Marie Salameh has revealed this week that she was “attacked and almost raped.” Speaking to a local entertainment news site, Salemeh said a man- reported to be a Syrian –scaled her building from the stairwell and entered her apartment while she was sleeping in her bedroom." (thanks Basim)

"Today, who would be better than an Arab Muslim woman, with the necessary qualifications, to speak up against all sorts of radicalism? And this is without taking into account that my country, Egypt, has been at peace in the Middle East for 40 years and can speak with the Israelis and Palestinians,”" (thanks S.)

On this article in the Times: What revisionism: 1) during the Cold War, Western writers protested the rise of communism and socialism among Muslims; now, they want to complain about why communism failed to prevail among Muslims. 2) absent from this account the role of Western powers in sabotaging and combatting all manifestations of socialism and communism among Muslims. As if the reasons for the lack of success were entirely religiously doctrinal.

""I am the one who killed Orouba and Hala Barakat, I admit it. They are both my relatives. Orouba is my father's cousin," Ahmed Baraka told Turkey’s magistrate's court.

"When I was in Syria, my father and my older brother were killed in the war. I decided to escape in order to get rid of the pressure that was exerted on me to join the forces of the Syrian regime," he explained.

"Orouba told me that I could come see her if I'm ever in Turkey. So I came to Turkey illegally and started working with Orouba."

But Ahmed Barakat, who says he regrets the killings, said he was invited to Orouba's house that night to receive his salary after quitting.

"I went to see her that night (the night of the crime) in her house. In the morning, I asked for my money. She said she gave the money to someone else and she had no money left. I got angry and started yelling at her face. She slapped me so I pushed her," he told the court." Every singe Western media sources insisted hours after the murder that they were politically assassinated by the regime, although they were killed with knives and strangling. This story is symptomatic of the unreliability of Western media reporting (from the right to the left) about Syria and its conflict.

It reads: A statement from the Minister of Interior (I think Prince Fahd was Minister of Interior then) about those who adhere to the communist principles: "What honors this nation is that God made its constitution Islam and blessed it with holy sites to which the heart of Muslims are directed...And if some deviants want to spew their prisons denouncing the heavenly message which was brought by our prophet Muhammad...to the advocacy of a destructive doctrine formed by a Jewish evil doer, the state will see to it that one of its most important obligations is to strike on the hands of those destroyers, out of belief in its religion and in defense of he entity of this Muslim nation against the chaos and blood spilling which are the end of all those who believe in communism."

Do you know that a Lebanese right-wing Christian militia was formed in the late 1980s with the name of Christian Jihad Organization? I don't see any references to it in books except in the book by Antoine Jubayli on the Phalanges Party.

It was quite an interview. I have never seen a more fawning interview: and by the founder of the tabloid TMZ. Apparently Trump, who is friends with Levin, arranged for the interview with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is such a liar that in the course of one hour, he lied blatantly and fundamentally contradicted himself at least twice: at one point, he said that as a child he never thought about the "threats" that Israel faced and the dangers he was in. Minutes later when asked about when he first started to think about the dangers facing Israel, he said: since I was a child. Kid you not. In the hour interview, the word Palestinian was not mentioned once, and the interviewer did not ask anything about them. They did not exist as far as he was concerned and Netanyahu could not be happier. When people talk about Netanyahu's father, notice that no one mentions the work that he did for Jobotinsky. The writings of Jabotinsky are his racialist doctrine (he spoke about the "racial recipe" of nations) are never mentioned in US media. My wife had told me that I will be upset if I watch it, but it was so ridiculous that it did not even upset me as it usually would.

There has been a debate about Jews of Egypt on the pages of the lousy Haaretz. Of course, the debate is among Zionists exclusively. It started with this article in which the author asserted the truth: that there has been no mass explosion of Jews from Egypt. This American then responded with a frantic plethora of fabrication and unsubstantiated claims just to make the point. But the article is ridiculous:It invents facts when no facts exists and typically projects Nazi analogies about Arabs. Notice he does not mind fudging the issues: nationalization of wealth (affecting not only Jews) become anti-Semitic nationalization: the Cairo fire (which resulted in the fire of many stores) becomes exclusively targeted against Jewish owned stores, and when laws targeted people holding French and British citizenships, it becomes a law that only targeted Jews (when it affected non-Jewish holders of French and British citizenship). But here is the deal: neither article talk about the Lavon Affair and about how the Zionist occupation state jeopardized the status of Jews in Arab lands in more ways than one: not only by claiming that it is a state for ALL JEWS of the world but also by recruiting among Jews of Egypt (not to mention other cases) for its terrorist Mossad operations. That was not mentioned. But the author protesting the first article basically admits: that there was no mass expulsion but that the atmosphere became hostile, which I won't deny. But let us compare the US after Sep. 11: 19 hijackers came from outside the US (and they were not recruited by any official state claiming to represent world Muslims--imagine if this was the case) and perpetrated a terrorist attack which was condemned by world Muslims (except some kooks). How did the US respond? It unleashed a wave of Islamophobia and blatant hatred of Islam and Muslims from which this country has not recovered: and there were mass arrests and expulsion of innocent Muslims, and contingency plans were discussed for the internment and expulsion of Muslims . I will say this: George W. Bush AND Trump invited Rev. Franklin Graham to officiate during their inauguration, and the man is one of the most repugnant haters of Islam and Muslim in the world. If what Graham says about Muslims and Islam is said about Jews and Judaism, the man would be despised and shunned in every Western country in the world. Instead, he is treated like a national treasure here and is received as a head of state in Western capitals. The president of the US today has officially called for a ban on ALL Muslims. There was no such thing under Nasser of Egypt: the regime never sanctioned an official anti-Semitic movement like there is an anti-Islam movement in the US promoted by many members of Congress (Democrats and Republicans). So if a Muslim were to leave the US in response to the wave of Islamophobia, would that be considered a mass expulsion of Muslims from the US? Also, notice that laws affecting Jews in Egypt were passed during the monarchy under the British colonial rule. Is that not significant? And most importantly, if there was such a mass explosion of Jews, how come there was always Jews in Egypt even if the numbers became very small? But let us go back to the analogy of US and Muslims vs. Egypt and Jews: if Sep. 11 terrorism was sanctioned by a state which claims to represent ALL Muslims, would that not have resulted in even more public hostility to Muslims in the US?

"Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had visited the Middle East during a series of cruises, police have revealed. Investigators remain stumped as to Paddock’s motives but said he visited the contentious regionon a cruise. The region, where Isis and other jihadi groups have a presence in some areas, may be of interest to security services because of speculation Paddock became radicalised. He also took at least 11 other cruises to other destinationsover the last several years, the AP reported." So he made one port stop in Egypt, and that made him a terrorist serial killer? (thanks Basim)

Comic by Terry Furry, reproduced from "Heard the One About the Funny Leftist?" by Cris Thompson, East Bay Express

As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.

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